Who Is America?

Sacha Baron Cohen's new (undercover) series filmed over 12 months in the US looks set to become one of the most controversial docus ever released.

Reportedly posing under various guises and conning many of America's leaders:

Sarah Palin has called Sacha Baron Cohen “evil, exploitative and sick” after revealing that the satirist had “duped” her into an interview for an upcoming series by posing as a wounded military veteran.
On Monday it was revealed that Baron Cohen had spent a year undercover filming a new project for the Showtime channel. The series, Who Is America?, explores a range of figures “across the political and cultural spectrum” and is reported to feature interviews with Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney – and Palin. A teaser released for the show features a clip of Cheney being asked to sign a “waterboarding kit”.

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Baron Cohen’s new series, Who is America?, feels like an ambush. Announced just this week, it premieres in the UK and the US less than a week from now. Very little is known about Who is America? and that’s possibly for good reason. It promises to “explore the diverse individuals, from the infamous to the unknown across the political and cultural spectrum, who populate the unique nation”. Its billing as “the most dangerous show in the history of television” makes it sound less of a programme and more of a prison-yard shanking. The secrecy, you imagine, is likely due to the high-profile targets and the viciousness with which they are going to be taken down.

Cohen's New Comedy Show

...this promises to be highly entertaining:

(CNN)Sacha Baron Cohen has been punking people for the last 20 years in various guises, which at first blush made his Showtime series, "Who is America?," sound like just more of the same. But the provocateur has reeled in some big fish -- who have dutifully denounced him -- as marks, adding sizzle to what otherwise amounts to serving old wine in a new bottle.

Sarah Palin, Alabama politician Roy Moore and former congressman Joe Walsh are among those who have lashed out at Cohen in advance, essentially turning themselves into ambassadors for Showtime's marketing department.Other high-profile figures will be featured over the course of the series, although the premiere opens with Bernie Sanders, indicating that Cohen's targets won't all be of one ideological stripe, even if conservatives receive the lion's share of abuse. "I was forced to see a doctor, and suddenly I have three diseases," Cohen's Southern conservative character tells a fidgety Sanders, seeking to illustrate the evils of Obamacare.As with his earlier work in this vein, including "Borat" and "Da Ali G Show," Cohen's shtick is a kind of performance art, built around just how far he can push his subjects, whose instincts to walk away or yell "cut" are curbed by the fact that they're being interviewed on camera. He is, basically, boiling a frog -- becoming gradually more outlandish, waiting to see how long it takes before they exhibit some inkling that the situation is abnormal.

Perhaps for that reason, most of the edited segments run four or five minutes, with each half-hour picking on a range of guests and topics, from a Trump delegate in South Carolina to a Southern California art gallery owner who thinks she's meeting an aspiring artist who has spent 20-plus years in prison, having taught himself to paint using bodily secretions.
The piece de resistance, though, comes during the closing third, as Cohen masquerades as an Israeli gun enthusiast, convincing gun-rights advocates and Republican politicians to endorse his proposal to train toddlers in the use of firearms.
Walsh turns up during that sequence, which also includes former Mississippi senator Trent Lott and GOP congressmen Matt Gaetz, Dana Rohrabacher and Joe Wilson. Those interviews are riotously funny, if only because everyone seems so earnest -- or at the very least, polite -- about someone asking them to read copy that proposes arming four year olds, backed up by claims peppered with scientific gibberish.
While the complaints have focused on the deceptive practices Cohen and his collaborators employed, the elected officials engender far less sympathy than the ordinary folks who have been duped, lacking the media savvy or support system to help sniff out this fraudster.

Cohen's ability to adlib in character has always been his greatest gift, even if it's tempting to wince at times at his excesses, which can tend to place a higher priority on discomfort than comedy.

Simply by virtue of the noise generated it's hard not to say the show already qualifies as a success by its star and Showtime's standards, although given that "Borat" triggered several unsuccessful lawsuits, in terms of potential grief, the network's legal department might beg to differ.
As for whether "Who is America?" finds an answer to its title, as with Cohen's past efforts, the series generally provides exaggerated snapshots of America, connected by one overarching picture: the hypnotic, numbing effect that the promise of TV exposure can induce, even on those who should theoretically know better.
"Who is America?" is currently available on demand and premieres July 15 at 10 p.m. on Showtime.

Sarah Palin, Alabama politician Roy Moore and former congressman Joe Walsh are among those who have lashed out at Cohen in advance, essentially turning themselves into ambassadors for Showtime's marketing department.

Former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh joined Sarah Palin and Roy Moore in decrying Sacha Baron Cohen’s new satire series “Who Is America?” during an interview Saturday on CNN.Cohen is “a funny guy because he gets people to say stupid things,” Walsh told the network. “He gets people to say stupid things because he lies to them.”t'Will you sign my waterboard?': Cheney gets the Sacha Baron Cohen treatmentDuring the segment, Cohen-as-Morad teams with staunch guns rights activist and president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Philip Van Cleave, to create a partially animated children’s video, replete with gunimals (guns that look like stuffed animals) and even a nursery rhyme about the best part of the body to strike (“Aim at the head, shoulders, not the toes, not the toes,” Van Cleave sings, punctuated by Cohen-as-Morad rhythmically yelling “fire!”).

Cohen-as-Morad then heads to Washington to find political support for his program. Several prominent members of the right wing give just that, including Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), along with Republican former Senate majority leader Trent Lott. It’s here that he encounters Walsh, who enthusiastically backs the program.“The intensive three-week Kinderguardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars,” Walsh says directly into the camera. “In less than a month — less than a month — a first-grader can become a first grenade-er.”“Happy shooting, kids,” he adds. It’s the last line in the show.As Walsh explained on CNN, Cohen duped him by telling him that he was “getting an award from some Israeli TV station because I’m a great supporter of Israel.”

“After they conducted an interview, they had me read off of a teleprompter talking about some of the innovative products that Israel invented,” Walsh explained. “Then they had me read about this 4-year-old child in Israel who, when a terrorist entered his classroom, somehow he grabbed the terrorist’s gun and held the terrorist at bay. And that was an example of how Israel trains and arms preschool kids on how to use firearms, and boy shouldn’t we do that in America?”He said as he read it, he thought, “Well, this is kind of crazy, but it is Israel and Israel is strong on defense.” Later, “we found out this whole thing was made up.”Walsh said he didn’t realize until 3 a.m. the next day that he’d been “duped.” He reiterated on Twitter Sunday that “no, I don’t believe we should train & arm kindergarteners.”

The former congressman also took to Twitter last week to explain what happened to him and to urge people to “#BoycottShowtime.”

And just like that producers rushed me out of the studio as an apparent fight broke out. Strangest interview of my life - don't think they spoofed me very much - but I did get this award, thanks

Walsh is just one of many angry with Cohen for the new show, including former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin who said she was victim of a “truly sick” prank in which she flew across the country to meet a disabled U.S. veteran — who, of course, was Cohen in disguise.